http://www.numbersusa.com/content/nusablog/beckr/september-15-2010/even-if-you-favor-amnesty-some-illegal-teens-dream-act-must-be-stop?jid=703274&lid=9&rid=5587&tid=538663By Roy Beck, Wednesday, September 15, 2010, 7:43 AM EDT - posted on NumbersUSA
ABC quoted me as saying that there is no question that many of the teenagers who would get an amnesty through the DREAM Act make for "compelling" cases. But I'm also quoted saying that this DREAM amnesty should not be passed.
If the DREAM Act were actually limited to the PR rhetoric that comes out of the pro-amnesty organizations, there might be reason for a debate.
If you barely paid attention, you would think this amnesty is just about illegal aliens who are high school valedictorians.
If you pay a little more attention you would know it is larger than that but think it is for good students who are teenagers or college students who were brought to the U.S. illegally when they were toddlers. You would think that they don't know the language of their home country, have no ties there and if not given a U.S. amnesty would be without a country.
And you might have believed all the rhetoric of the pro-amnesty forces of the last year that they only want legalization (amnesty) for illegal aliens if it is coupled with strong enforcement measures that will prevent a buildup of an illegal population in the future.
Well, the open-borders people have spent millions of dollars on PR firms to figure out how to lie to and mislead the American people in the smoothest way possible -- how to seem to be saying things that they actually aren't.
Here's the real story:
No. 1: Not valedictorians -- or even necessarily good students.
Any illegal alien who can manage to meet the minimum requirements to graduate from high school or get an equivalent degree meets the first test.
No. 2: Primarily NOT teens or college students.
The Senate DREAM bill allows you to be up to 35 years old!
The House bill has no upper limit.
No. 3: Don't have to have come when a child.
An illegal alien can get this amnesty even if he didn't arrive in the U.S. until age 15. That's right -- he can spend his first 15 years learning the language and culture of his home country and developing all kinds of ties there and then come to the U.S. and later claim need for a DREAM amnesty because he supposedly has no country to go back to.
I was on a national Hispanic cable TV show last week on which a videotaped profile was run of a well-heeled-looking woman from another country bragging in front of New York City scenery that a few years ago she had illegally overstayed her tourist visa when her son was 15 so he could go to a U.S. college and pursue a U.S. career. DREAM would reward her and all the rest of people in the world who might think like her.
No. 4: Bill is open to gigantic fraud.
The bill is written so that the 2, 3 or 4 million illegal-alien applicants only have to CLAIM to meet the criteria. They don't have to PROVE anything.
The government has to build a case, one illegal at a time, and prove the claims on the application are false in order for the illegal alien to lose the amnesty. Can you imagine how many times that is likely to happen?
No. 5: DREAM does nothing to stop the behavior that put teenagers into their situation. It leaves the jobs magnet in place.
This amnesty has no enforcement measures at all. It allows employers to continue to hire illegal aliens, enticing millions more parents to bring their children here illegally and stay long enough for them to become high school students and demand another amnesty in a few years.
No. 6: DREAM leaves intact the chain migration system that will allow these 2.1 million illegal aliens to eventually send for millions more relatives.
Rather quickly, the amnestied illegal aliens would be able to get green cards for their parents. And millions of additional relatives would be able to start planning their applications and getting in line. This starts with adult siblings and moves on to aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.
A large percentage of the illegal aliens in the U.S. today are extended family members of the illegal aliens who got amnesty in 1986 and also those in the six more-limited amnesties in the 1990s.
Friends, when you call a Senate office and hear (or know) that that Senator is thinking about voting for DREAM, please draw from the points above to press the Senator to hold off until somebody draws up a bill that matches the rhetoric of all the PR promises.
ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA